The problem I have always had with voice control is that it just doesn’t really seem to fit into my home automation. I don’t want to give Home Assistant a verbal command to turn on the lights. I want it to detect that I’ve entered the room and set the lights to the appropriate scene automatically; I haven’t touched a light switch in weeks. For selecting an album or movie to play, it’s easier to use a menu on a screen than to try to explain it verbally.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m hugely in favor of anything that runs locally instead of using the “cloud.” I think that the majority of people running a home automation server want to tinker with it and streamline it to do things on its own. I want it to “read my mind.” The people who just want a basic solution probably aren’t going to set up HA.
Maybe I’m missing a use case for voice control?
Even ignoring privacy arguments, I think that voice control is a great use case for running services locally - lower latency due to not having up upload your sample and the option of having it learn your accent is very attractive.
That said, voice control is irritatingly error-prone and seems to be slower than just reaching for the remote control. I agree that automatic stuff would be best, but some stuff you can’t have rules for.
Something that would be interesting is a more eye- and gesture-based system: I’m thinking something like you look at the camera and slice across your throat for stop or squeeze fingers together to reduce volume. This is definitely one to run locally, for privacy and performance reasons.
I don’t think Sonos gets enough credit for their local voice control capability. It can’t be integrated into home assistant to do anything beyond controlling the Sonos speakers, but I have been ABSOLUTELY blown away by how responsive the voice commands have been. Literally a 100% success rate after using it for a couple months now. It correctly interprets if you want to start/stop playing, can find music by the artist I want from Apple Music (not sure about other streaming services), and will correctly adjust playing status for a specific speaker if you say to adjust music on that speaker only - even if you command it from another room.
The best part - no bullshit worst responses about “by the way….” Like on Alexa. At most, you get a short response like “good choice” or “ok”.
Sonos isn’t cheap, but I would 100% buy them again every time because it just works.
I tried the local voice assistant on my Sonos a while back and did like how well it worked to play music but at the time it didn’t support Spotify so it was a no-go. Do they now?
Do you know whether it supports locations and timers? For example I can tell Alexa “Play Eminem in the Family Room for one hour”
Can confirm timer works - set a 5 minute timer for playing music in the family room).
Spotify does work with Sonos now (I don’t use it but I have my account set up with it), but voice control does not work with Spotify.
Thanks. Sorry for being unclear: I use Spotify on my Sonos speakers all the time but was concerned about Sonos Voice working with Spotify. I guess it’s still a “no”
FYI- I received an email the other day that sonos officially added voice control for Spotify!
Excellent! Thanks for posting: I’ll have to give it a try
